Monday, April 8, 2019

One popular theory is that ghouls are created when the higher souls are weakened by cannibalism. According to this theory, the unnatural act of consuming one's own species is inherently repellent to the universal morals of creation, and so the higher souls divest themselves of the flesh that they find abhorrent. In this power vacuum, the lower souls insert themselves, and then expand to fill the higher functions of the mind. The hunger of animals, the uncaring mind of minerals--these become the new philosophy of the ghoul.

Another theory: it is well understood that certain sins are so repugnant that their punishment cannot be postponed to the afterlife. Masturbation is punished by blindness. Blasphemy is punished with polyps. When viewed through this lens, ghoulishness is explained simply as the appropriate punishment for cannibalism. A longer lifespan is no gift if there is no humanity, no satisfaction it. Who cares how long a beast lives?

These theories explain the spectrum of ghouls, as it is usually described.

On one end, you have the youngest ghouls, the itinerant graverobbers who are fully alive, but have a ghoul's touch. They are corpulent souls, who struggle to hide their hungers. This is the most cosmopolitan time of their ghoul-life, when they seek out others of their kind, and cluster in their abominable enclaves.

A young ghoul might be a portly man in a top hat, with a wide smile and a warm handshake, charitably offering to pay for the funeral expenses of unknown paupers.

At the other end, you have the the cadaverous undead who have been so consumed by hunger that they have gnawed their own limbs to the bone. They long ago abandoned the trappings of humanity in favor in favor of their bestial passions. They usually lose all discretion at some point in the process, and are discovered and destroyed by witch hunters.

But those that retain some cunning still succumb to exposure and malnutrition, and usually die behind some parish kitchen, shivering from a fever that they no longer feel. When death finally claims them, they do not notice it (and would not care if they did). They only truly develop into the ravening, skeletal things of legend after suffering the madness and autocannibalism of long entombment (which is surpringly common among ghouls).

The autocannibalism is believed to be driven by self-loathing rather than hunger, since ghoul flesh is not usually appetizing to ghouls.

However, there is one creature that cannot be explained by either of these theories.

Also known as elder ghouls, ghasts transcend the biology that spawned them.

Growth is normally impossible in the undead, but ghasts seem to be able to switch between life and undead at will, according to their needs. This may even extend into true death, which ghasts may use as a form of hibernation. There are stories of leathery corpses the size of horses, dredged from the peat, that have groaned and stirred once the sunlight warmed their black sockets. If this is true, and ghasts can hibernate by dying, then perhaps they can never be truly killed.

And so ghasts grow through the dim epochs, assuming bestial forms more suited for their inclinations.

But this growth is not the growth of natural life. No botanic soul dwells in their flesh, that guides and shapes the new vessel. This is like the metabolism of a lich: no longer autonomous and entirely directed by the mind. A lich's heart does not beat until the lich commands it; a ghoul's flesh does not grow until the ghoul wills it. (And in fact, this may be what causes a ghoul to transition into a ghast.)

And with the transformation of long years, they regain some measure of cunning. It is not a resumption of their human mind--that was lost long ago. It is something new, a dark composite of those that they have devoured.

This is because the second defining feature of the ghast is the liver, an organ which has no true analog in any other animal. A singular tissue, it alone is capable of turning flesh into memories. It is perhaps related to speak with dead, as it involves that soul that lives in corpses (rather than the soul that continues to the afterlife), except that the soul is not conversed with, but devoured and internalized.

Ghasts trap the dead, but not in a conscious collection of discrete souls, but instead in a gruesome patchwork of overlapping memory.

And since it is the memory of the flesh, not the memory of the conscious mind, the content of the life is remembered without any of the emotion (except as the body remembers emotion: a flush of the face and a quickening of the heart, nothing more).

They can speak, sometimes very well. (And depending on the evolutions of their verbal apparatus, they may have dozens of voices coming from one mouth.) But the mind behind the voices is an abominable one. Memories of a hundred people may blend together, sometimes in an irrational synthesis. Parents are switched, blended, or remembered as a multi-headed amalgam. When an ancient ghast was a child, it lost thousands of teeth, cried over the death of dozens of parents, and lost half-a-dozen limbs to accidents.

There is a famous ghast named Blackchapel, who is named for the town he devoured. He is a mad thing, who haunts the necropolis he made, forever struggling to resume the lives that he ended.

And there is the Ghoul Worm, whose directed growth has taken a route that is very different from most ghasts. He devoured the same death cult that he once led. They still live in his belly, a groaning monstrosity that worships itself from its manifold viscera. He is as cruel as any killer, and as wise as any sage.

The flush of knowledge is strongest after the meal. There are stories of a ghast eating a child, only to come sniffing around the dead child's house, calling for its mother in perfect imitation. It is not a ruse, though, and the ghast genuinely believes itself to be that child. The dead live again in the ghast, and if that same ghast saw its mother, it would embrace her and kiss her and devour her alive.

And that is why you should never open your door if you hear your dead child weeping outside.

The liver is where flesh is converted to memory. If the liver is extracted, it can be turned into a tincture called ghrism. If drank, it confers the same ability to the drinker. If it is drank, and part a corpse is consumed, the dead will live for a while in your body. You will be supplanted, and then you will co-exist, and then the dead will fade until only a shade exists, a figment. There may be times when you remember someone else's mother as your own, or feel surges of someone else's racism.

from Far Cry Primal

Using Ghasts in Your Game

Ghrism is obviously very gameable. It's effectively a potion of speak with dead with more flavor, more drawbacks, and possibly more power. It also turns a ghast nest into a valuable resource. (And I love it when my players hunt monsters for their parts.)

It's also an opportunity for character development and roleplaying opportunities. Your character is a little more interesting when pieces of the 2000-year-old princess mummy keep surfacing, perhaps.

I'd actually like to write a GLOG class based on a person who has eaten too many memories, to the point of forgetting their original identity, amid a swarm of transplanted memories. (It might be as simple as rolling a randomly generated class every session.)

Excruciation -- If the target fails a Save, they are afflicted by excruciation. If they choose to spend their turn writhing in pain, they take no damage. If they choose to act normally, they take 1d6 damage. At the beginning of each turn after the first, excruciation has a 2-in-6 chance of dissipating.

Conversion -- As a free action, a ghast can choose whether to be alive, dead, or undead (with all the usual implications).

A ghasts liver can be harvested for a single dose of ghrism. With access to a full alchemical laboratory and some successful skill checks, you can harvest as much as 2d4 doses of ghrism.

If you need a bigger ghast, just give it more HD and attacks. Excruciation is just a bigger version of Agony (1d4 damage, 3-in-6 chance of ending), which regular ghouls have, and is better than paralyzation.

Saturday, April 6, 2019

There are hundreds of paladin orders. They are diverse and scattered, because the Church does not attempt to organize all of them. In fact, some of the orders predate the Church which they serve.

Most paladins are not incorporated directly into the Church's heirarchy. Some orders are associated with kings and countries. Some are monastic and semi-independent. Regardless, they are all universally trusted and respected.

Except for a few that aren't.

The Condemned -- The Order of the Tortoise

Sometimes paladins fall. Their crimes are so horrible that they cannot be allowed to continue in their current position, and yet remain redeemable in the eyes of the Church. (And besides, some of them are too skilled to waste.)

Some are allowed to repent and pay simple penance, but for others, their penance is to be condemned to the Order of the Tortoise.

Oftentimes, their sins are understandable, and yet inexcusable. In the eyes of the world, they are criminal paladins, serving out their sentences, to be obeyed, yet despised.

"I killed an innocent so that a dozen could live."

"I knew she was guilty, and yet I let her go. She was no harm to anyone anymore."

So while the Church may have sympathy, there is no ambiguity in the Orthochism.

Paladins of the Tortoise are locked inside their armor. Their names are stripped from them, and they are answer to the name of Tortoise. If you need to differentiate them, use adjectives.

If they die before their full term is served, their armor will raise them as dutiful undead, until the completion of their service.

If they complete the shameful length of service, their names and honor are restored, and their time in the Order of the Tortoise is never spoken of again.

Their coat of arms is a tortoiseshell, each scute filled with a white circle that represents the moon.

Baldwin IV from the Kingdom of Heaven

The Afflicted -- The Alabaster Order

The Church conducts many charitable works, and one of their most visible ones is the care of lepers.

Leper colonies (such as the one at the Isle of Pigs) are built, protected, and fed by the Pope's purse. All lepers are welcomed there.

However, lepers who are still able-bodied are strongly encouraged to join the Alabaster Order, which is composed almost entirely of lepers. (The few exceptions are usually people who joined on behalf of a family member with leprosy, who was unable to join the Order personally.) It is not a duty, but an honor, to serve in the Alabaster Order.

It is said that no paladin will rot behind his white mask as long as he shows no cruelty nor cowardice. And indeed, that sometimes seems to be true. There are members of the Alabaster Order who are so ravaged by their disease that they cannot speak except through a stylus, without any lessening of their sword arm.

Their visors look like white faces, and they wear scarves soaked with rosewater. (Remember: diseases are caused by foul smells, and that rosewater = antiplague in Centerra.)

They are based in the House of the Fountain, and led by Sir Grindelwine the White.

Their coat of arms is white rose with petals falling from it, on a field of red.

The Unrecognized -- The Order of the Mouse

There is a problem with forbidden knowledge: it corrupts. It corrupts inevitably, if given enough time.

For a long time, the Church fielded paladins who would hunt down insane cults and execute heretics.

But cults must be studied before they can be infiltrated, and heretics always talk so much. And so it was, that the Church's best witch hunters would eventually fall victim to the same corruption that they stamped out. They would doubt, or they would despair, or they would go mad from their rough enlightenments.

A simple solution was found. The paladin's mind would be partitioned off, entire lobes would be quarantined. This would keep the mind from intercorrelating too many of its contents.

<digression>This is not as mad as it sounds. You (reading this blog post) have a conscious brain that is aware of itself, but you have many submerged systems running in the background. You have a secret ub-brain that makes you sad when you hear a song that reminds you of your ex. You have a secret sub-brain that down-regulates hunger when you are playing WoW. You have a secret sub-brain that gives you boners in Algebra for no reason. </digression>

In the original implementation, these paladins were divided into three parts. The conscious (normal) mind, the "librarian", and the "library". The librarian chose what the conscious mind would forget, and would store it in the library. These partitions would protect the paladin from any harmful knowledge.

That practice isn't too common anymore. Too well-known, and therefore more controversial, but they exist.

A more extreme (and potentially more common) practice is to isolate the part of the paladin's brain that remembers that they are a paladin. And so you have people who are puppets of their subconscious (moreso than usual), who manipulate themselves to innocently infiltrate the cult. They could be naive for years before the librarian pulls back the curtain, the memories come rushing back in, and they murder their cultist friends and then march back to Coramont for absolution.

They have no coat of arms, and are not acknowledged by anyone.

The Unsanctioned -- The Order of the Worm

The psychology of a ghoul is especially remarked upon. The classic legend, told of taverns everywhere, tells of the loving husband who died protecting his loving wife in the midst of a hateful war. But he returned as a ghoul, and lovingly hunted down his wife before lovingly eating her alive.

When a person becomes a ghoul, most of the memories remain intact. The personality also tends to survive the process. The mood is, allegedly, much improved by the process, and stories about of good-natured ghouls who are as cheerful as they are ravenous.

What does not survive are the specific cares and motivations. They still crave the company of their old friends, and remember their addresses, but care nothing for the health or happiness of those same friends.

Most ghouls have lost what little faith they had in life, but there are some exceptions. Those who are especially devout--who are so committed to their faith that they absolutely cannot conceive of a self-identity that lacks it--sometimes carry that religion into undeath.

Mostly dead clergy, supplemented by no few soldiers. You'll find them everywhere, but especially places where brave corpses were abandoned.

The Order of the Worm is a loose collection of devout ghouls that have sworn to shun the flesh of the living faithful. More incredibly, it is a vow that they sometimes keep. (Ghouls have a famously hard time keeping promises when they are hungry, and they are often hungry.)

<sidebar>Sidebar: ghouls are cosmopolitan, and when common people imagine ghouls, they think of a trio of fleshy-faced graverobbers who travel between towns, digging up fresh corpses and eating them, who must be burned when they are caught and killed lest they raise from the dead. The mad, withered things that you'll find in dungeons are the uncommon phenotype. And being intelligent and cosmopolitan, they naturally seek out others of their kind. And so it is that culture and words spread among the ghouls.</sidebar>

And so they are the armored fellows crawling on the ceiling of the cistern, who will ask you if you've recently attended church. (How recently? I suppose that's recently enough.)

They may ask you recite some verses, to prove your faith.

If they are very hungry, they may ask for more obscure verses.

If they are very, very hungry, they may eat you anyway. Who remembers every word anyway?

And sometimes, if you are in trouble, they will help you. They are especially likely to assist you if the act is likely to yield some tasty zombies to eat.

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

I'm going to tell you about a place, and then I'm going to tell you about a class.

This is going to be a difficult class to play.

It is difficult because you are a parasite, and you only infect other player's characters.

You will be powerful together, but eventually you will consume their body entirely, and they will die. You will remain, but they will need to roll a new character. You killed them.

Becoming an Oscadian

In the yellow wastes of Abasinia, there is a plateau called Osk. Atop the plateau is the is the city of the same name, the city of living rubies, where the black sugar is made and love is only known to slaves. We will not speak of them.

Beneath the plateau are the caves of Osk. And in the largest of the caverns is the Mother of Osk, who has grown too large to ever leave. Her first birth was as a dragon, but her second birth was as an Oscadian, and indeed she is the only mature Oscadian in the world, for Oscadians do not reach sexual maturity unless their first birth is from the embers of a dragon's egg.

The Mother is a gentle creature, who has grown weary of war, and loves the quiet dusk beneath the plateau. Even those who seek her out in order to kill her, or steal her many treasures, are usually not killed, if she can help it. They are merely maimed, then nursed back to health.

She consorts with poets, philsophers, and priests. She is a devout follower of Hesaya. If you do her some great service, and if you are gentle with her rough children, she may reward you.

This reward may take the form of wisdom, treasure, or healing. The poets are wise, the gold is lustrous, and her milk is thick with potency, but the greatest gift she can give is to infest you with one of her children, a rite normally only reserved for dragons.

Total psychic consent is required for this process to be successful. NPCs are unreliable in this regard--only PCs can carry a parasitic Oscadian, and only PCs can play an Oscadian. They are too powerful and subtle for anything less.

DM's Note

Oscadians are a full PC class. Part of the fun of this parasite class is the fact that you essentially become two players inhabiting the same body. This is unusual and intimate, and is hopefully a unique roleplaying experience, culminating with the death of the host.

But yeah, sure if you want to treat it as a living suit of armor that casts spells, sure, go ahead. Be boring.

An individual Oscadian is actually a colony of clonal organisms, like a coral reef. There are nineteen types of sub-Oscadians that will grow and differentiate inside the host's body, each one technically an independent animal that shares a bloodstream with its siblings. These sub-Oscadians will eventually replace every organ in the body.

No one really really give a shit about that, though. When someone sees an Oscadian, they see a human body overgrown with thick, homogenous, grey scales. Each of these scales is a sub-Oscadian (one morphology out of the nineteen). Each one has a single red eye that they open when they cast spells.

When the head is replaced, it is will a flat, heavy-browed face that is mostly occupied with a single red eye the size of a fist. If the calcite eye is ever pried from the skull, it is a gemstone worth 200s. It will not regrow. There is only a narrow slit on the bottom of the head. This is the polite mouth, and it is used only for speech. It is incapable of eating.

Luckily, at this point the rude mouth has already grown out of the solar plexus, and is capable of assuming this responsibility with a formidable efficacy.

This process is gradual, though. You begin your life as only an arm.

These humanoid Oscadians are sterile. True Oscadians are generated from a draconic host.

Sharing a Body

Roll your ability scores as normal. When you fully take over this body, you'll inherit the physical ability scores from them, but until then, use your own physical ability scores.

You currently control an arm. Your host loses control of that arm. You can use your arm normally. This potentially allows you to each make a melee attack against a target, or you can both coordinate your turns to fire a single arrow at your target.

Generate your HP normally. You now share an HP pool with your host. This makes you very hard to kill. If either of you die, you both die. You have separate minds, but a singular body. If a spell or poison affects one of your bodies, it also affects the other one.

Spellcasting

As a wizard, with one MD per level, up to a maximum of 3 MD. An Oscadian begins knowing only two spells: speak with reptiles and speak with insects. At Oscadian B they learn acidbolt. At Oscadian C they learn dominate insect. They can use scrolls but cannot replace the spells they know.

You require the use of your arm to cast these spells (as normal). You don't require a mouth (which is good, because you don't have any). You can produce the speech required for spellcasting by buzzing all of your sub-Oscadians simultaneously.

Living Armor

You grow to cover the entire body except for the face. You count as a suit of plate, except you do not take up any inventory slots. (You still sink automatically if you fall in water.)

Similar to how shields are sundered, you can choose to shatter some of your sub-Oscadians as a free reaction. If you choose to do this, you may reduce the incoming damage by 1d8, and your AC decreases by 2 points. You can do this twice, but not thrice (since that would kill too many of your sub-Oscadians).

It's also pretty traumatic, since you then have to watch your siblings (pieces of yourself) flex and squeak and bleed to death on the floor, like legless beetles.

Your dermal population will regrow in one week.

Ragged Claw

Your hand is not a normal human hand anymore. It is a jagged talon the size of a shovel's head. You can attack with it to deal 1d6 damage, but you cannot do any fine manipulations with it.

You can also perform a horrific haymaker with it. You get +2 Attack and deal 2d6 damage, but if you miss or fail to kill your target, you lose your next standard action as you recover your poise.

Consumption

You finally grow populous enough to consume your host's head. You retain many features from your host, but the face is not one of them. Your face is now dominated by a glassy, cyclopean eye.

You also consume the brain. You gain access to all of your host's memories, and you retain one class ability from your host. This is negotiated with your DM, but I recommend retaining their most iconic ability, such as a barbarian's rage or a wizard's spellbook.

You have one regular humanoid arm and one Ragged Claw.

You are now more than just an arm, you are the entire body. Your host is now dead, and their player will have to roll a new character.

Oscadian Psychology

If an Oscadian were to read this blog post, they would have many objections to the terminology that I've used.

They do not see a parasite, nor do they see a host. Instead, they see a first child and a second child, who eventually mature together into the Oscadian.

In their minds, an Oscadian is made up of many subunits, each of which is technically an individual animal with it's own heart, lungs, and (linked) mind. A human, too, is theorized to be made up of tiny individual animals as well. None of this is an obstacle to the concept of all these disparate parts seeing themselves as a unified whole. An Oscadian's sense of self is no less fractured than a human's.

The way they see it, an Oscadian has four parents. A human father and a human mother. An Oscadian mother (Mother) and an Oscadian father (long dead, except for what remains in Mother's spermathecae).

An Oscadian who visits their human parents would be just as loving and understanding as the host human would have been, and will probably try to gently explain that changes that they have undergone. They still love their parents. They still love the Prophetessa (May She Live Again). And they still love beer, even if they can't taste it anymore.

1. Clerics don't choose their spells, their deity does.
2. On the upside, Clerics don't suffer from magical corruption or catastrophes (from rolling doubles or triples).
3. On the downside, Cleric spells are unreliable, since the (always fickle) deity may not choose to grant the spell at the moment it is requested.

Faith Dice

Faith Dice (FD) are just Magic Dice (MD) that have a variable size. They are otherwise interchangable (and a multiclassed wizard/cleric can use them interchangeably). They default to a d8.

When a wizard casts a spell, they choose how many MD to invest. Each MD contributes to the final spell, and after rolling, the following chart is consulted.

1-3 MD is returned to the mana pool.

4-6 MD is depleted, and will return to the mana pool tomorrow morning.

Clerics work the same way, with one additional wrinkle:

7+ MD is not depleted. The dice roll does not contribute to the spell. (A fizzle.)

Since clerics are usually using a d8 as their casting die, it will not be uncommon for their spells to fizzle (if all the dice fizzle) or be underpowered (if only a fraction of the casting dice fizzle).

Faith dice improve (shrink) or worsen (enlarge) according to the clerics behavior.

If a cleric doesn't follow the strictures of their religion, the dice increase in size until the cleric atones.

If a cleric atones at a church (confesses, pays a hefty tithe), their dice are reset to a d8. Note that the cleric must genuinely repent of their behavior (but the player doesn't necessarily have to).

If a cleric receives a special blessing from the Pope or the Prophetessa (May She Live Again), the FD will be improved to d6s until expended. Likewise, if you are in a situation that is very obviously in favor of your deity (e.g. fighting a Satan, trying to save an innocent child) then your FD are also temporarily improved to d6s.

Here's the progression.

d6 (temporary) <> d8 <> d10 <> d12 <> d20 <> d100 <> Apostasy

If you reach Apostasy, you can either choose to abandon the Cleric class entirely, or become a Heretic and regain your powers (along with the enmity of nearly every civilized person). Heretics are required to expound on the nature of their heresy, both in the game and outside of it. Heretics who defeat the Church (whatever that means) will be vindicated and their heresy will become incoporated into the orthodoxy of the Church.

God's Plan
A cleric doesn't choose their spells, their deity does. The DM should pick spells for the player based on what is most likely to be useful that day. (DM, feel free to use these spell choices as omens, e.g. protection from fire might forecast the possibility of a dragon encounter.)

A player can negotiate this ability with an animal sacrifice (a cow, at least) and an hour-long ritual. They can ask to choose all of their spells, half of their spells, etc.

Epiphany
A cleric can identify a magic item by praying over it in a church. This is similar to a wizard's Identify ability, except that it is 100% reliable, but it requires a church.

Ceremonies
Each ceremony takes 2 hours.

Union – Two people are bonded. If your partner would
take physical damage while you are beside them, you can choose to
take half of it. If one dies, the other loses 500XP.

Funeral – The dead are honored. Everyone gains XP
equal to 50% of the deceased's total XP. (So if a PC with 3000 XP
died, each of the three surviving PCs will get +500 XP at the end
of the session.) This transfer only works from player characters,
to player characters.

Sermon – You can implant a suggestion in all Neutral and Friendly attendees. Make a single roll for each (roughly) homogenous group/demographic. You still need to get people to sit through a 2 hour sermon, and most people are not well-disposed towards religions other than their own.

Divination

You ask a question of your deity, which is then answered through a vision or a dream. (For Hesayan clerics, this takes the form of a sleep-like trance while watching clouds.)

First, choose what level of divinity you wish to ask.

Level 1 - A Saint or Holy Emperor
Level 2 - One of the Lesser Gods
Level 3 - Zulin, the Prince of the Upper Air
Level 4 - The Authority (this is forbidden to all non-kings)

Roll 1d6 for every level of the divinity. Every result of 1-3 is a success. Each success improves the quality of your divination.

Roll 1d6 for every level of the divinity. Every result of 1-3 is a failure. Each failure beyond the first causes your FD to degrade one step. Your FD will never degrade if you are performing the divinations in a clear service to the Church.

You cannot ask the same question twice. You cannot even ask related questions, either. Aside from that, feel free to do all the divination you wish.

Here are some examples of visions produced by different levels of success. The player doesn't know the level of success, merely the result.

In response to the question of "Where is the crown of Hesperornithes located?"

0 Successes

Pure nonsense.

Ex: You dream that are are sitting in a village
square, surrounded by your family. You are digging a hole, but it
keeps filling up with milk. Serpents come and drink the milk.

1 Success

Moderately useful omen that is difficult to
interpret.

Ex: You are sailing on a ship to your destination.
The captain is a burning torch. The navigator is a blind rooster.
For your crimes, you are about to be imprisoned in a barrel of
sponges. (This dream communicates the idea that it might be on an
island, at least. The rooster is a very oblique reference to
eggs.)

2 Successes

Very useful omen that is
somewhat difficult to interpret.

Ex: A faceless king pulls
eggs out of a dog's mouth, shows them to you, then crushes each one underfoot. Brine
and fish dribble from his mouth. He screams like a seagull. (This dream communicates that an
ocean journey might be involved, and shows broken eggs.)

3+ Successes

Extremely useful omen that is easy to interpret.

Ex: You turn into a bird, fly across accurate
geography, mate with Zulin, build a nest atop a castle on the Isle
of Broken Eggs, and a tiny prince hatches from your egg, singing a
righteous song. (You can't really get any more clear than this.)

Yes/No questions are generally easier to interpret, since you only have to know if the vision was a positive or negative one.

If you are bad at coming up with random crap for visions, the you can just roll a d100 on the House of Hours.

Miracle

Miracles
are powerful, world-changing events. You can ask for almost
anything, as long as it is:

related
to your deity's portfolio

doesn't
go against your deity's interests

When
you first get this ability, your Miracle score is set to 3. Your
Miracle score improves by 1 point whenever you finish a session or
gain a level.

You
can attempt a miracle once per session. To attempt a Miracle,
describe to the DM what you are praying for, and then roll a d20. If
the result is equal-or-less than your Miracle points, the Miracle
occurs and your Miracle score is reset to 0.

At
your DM's discretion, you may also gain Miracle points for performing
great deeds in the service of the Church.

Clerics
do not gain this ability until they perform some major ceremony in a
central place of worship, such as leading a town's Harvest Ritual.
(Ask your DM.)

Cleric Teams

I really want to make mono-class parties more viable, because they're awesome. So here are a couple of advantages that you get by having multiple clerics in the party.

Heaven's Reach

Clerics can ignore range restrictions when casting spells on each other.

Guardian Angel Pool

The FP granted by the Guardian Angel ability are now pooled together with each other. It is possible to cast a Guardian Angel spell with multiple FP. Additionally, the Guardian Angel knows at least one different spell for each cleric that contributes to it. For example, if a three-cleric party would know than just heal. They would have access to heal, cure poison, and feather fall.

Coming Soon- A PDF of actual clerics, including a couple of non-Church clerics.

- Rules for removing clerics from your game entirely, and replacing them with a single Guardian Angel that the entire party shares. (Partially because I don't find clerics that appealing, partially because PCs in pseudo-medieval settings should probably be more religious.)

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

To the rest of the world, the Marilanth Petal is a criminal organization, peddling drugs and poisons in alleyways the world over. But in Bospero, they are merely another of the noble clans--another miniscule dukedom in a city infested with dukes.

That the Duke of Poppies is the head of a criminal enterprise is no secret, but it is certainly not something that is remarked upon in polite company. Besides, the city already tolerates greater offenses against decency (the Stewer's Guild, the Black Rabbits, the ever-larger fashions of the nobility, the scandals of the Queen, and the financial predations of dragonkind) and is perhaps stronger for it.

A Sidebar: Bospero

The largest city in the world, Bospero is technically a tight cluster of dukedoms, each separated on a small island, where the duke holds absolute power. These islands are separated from each other by trash-filled canals, protected from the roughest vagaries of the sea by a maze of breakwaters, built atop Odo Longo, a sunken city just off the coast, thought to be build by giants in past ages.

These dukedoms were originally limited, and only awarded infrequently, but as the breakwaters proved too be too effective, silt built up around the city, and the ocean became shallow enough that islands could be constructed by ambitious nobles. And while the granting of duchies has ebbed and flowed with the options of the regent, the end result is that Bospero now has nearly a hundred soverign duchies, all locked together in a maze of shallow canals, each with the power to negotiate foreign treaties, tax visitors, and declare war on other duchies.

Bospero is a famously difficult to city to navigate. Foreigners describe the city as pure madness, a riotous warren of strange laws, toll bridges, mystery cults, incomprehensible dialects, and a heady gradient between street gangs and duchal armies. The locals are proud of their city and its reputation. They wouldn't have it any other way.

This is also where Coramont, the Holy City, is located.

End of Sidebar

Where was I? Oh yes, the Duke of Lornavel is a terrible man. If you ever wish to make a name for yourself in Bospero, make sure that you are a friend to him.

But there is a reason why the island of Lornavel is given this special dispensation: they are responsible for satisfying the Mantleray. They are not scrutinized by the queensguard; the Grand Euphorium is never searched. The crown doesn't even tax them--their only civic responsibilities are the deliveries.

And for this delivery, they have only a single client, the Mantlewray.

More correctly, her name is Elzabeth Jonna Mantlewray, the former duchess of Madrigo. Her story is lost, another victim of her own predations, but pieces of her history can still be assembled from among the flotsam.

Most of the stories agree that she did it to herself. Madrigo had a history of strong alchemists, primarily focused on metallurgy, but with enough biomancers in the family to make her transformation very plausible.

The stories disagree on whether her son was her first test subject, a simultaneous effort, or later recruited to her cause once she was leading a rebellion and needed an ally. Regardless, even though her son is just as much of a Mantlewray as her, he is not called by his familial name, Jubalcain Monastus Mantlewray. Instead he is called The Lech, or sometimes The Son of the Squid.

Another story claims that she did it to flee an abusive marriage. (It is agreed that her own estate was among the first that she destroyed.)

And yet another story claims that she simply desired power. There are no supporting facts required for this explanation--human nature has proved it to be true countless times.

These theories are not mutually exclusive, and her true rationale is probably not limited to a single motivator.

Still, is it difficult to see the brutal remains of her violence and think them to be products of a subtle mind. Everywhere in the city, you can see places where the stone is lashed to the foundation by rasping tentacles. Certain spires are still bent and rusted by her terrible exhalations. And although the birth defects have declined, it is not rare to see an elder whose body has been bent by her cruel poisons.

The only places that do not bear her scars are the Holy City of Coramont (because she did not dare), and the Golden Road (because she could not).

A Sidebar: The Golden Road

The Golden Road is a bridge that traverses the Bosperian Bay, connecting Bospero with its sister city of Marinda. The bridge is 36 miles long, and is usually crossed in three days. The bridge is studded with fortifications dating back to the Road War, when both Marinda and Bospero competed for control of the Golden Road. It was a long, bitter, slow conflict that Bospero ultimately won.

The Golden Road is built from adamantine, and shares other similarities with the Bastion of Medurak (a dam) and the Forbiddance (a wall). Bospero has mixed feelings about the Golden Road. It connects them to the lands to the north, but it has also allowed foreign armies to swiftly march into the city. They are proud of it because they control it, but they are frustrated that they cannot even chip the least piece of its structure.

End of Sidebar

During the rebellion she was the Traitorous Abomination. When she was crowned, she was Lady Mantlewray again. And now that she has loosened her grip on the throne and the city, she has regressed into the Mantlewray, well on her way to becoming a beast again.

And as the Mantlewray becomes more and more withdrawn, she concerns herself with less and less of the world. There are few alive who have heard her speak, and certainly no one living remembers her tearful confessions in Coramont, her supplications at the feet of the Prophetessa (May She Live Again), and the forgiveness that she received.

In fact, the only thing that seems to concern the Mantlewray these days is the potency and punctuality of her drugs, a task that has only become more challenging over the years as both the Mantlewray and her son has grown larger over the decades.

But while the Mantlewray is withdrawing from the city that she once ruled, her son leans into it more with every passing year. For a while, he was fascinated with brewing, and ran a brewery for years, producing several quality lagers. Everyone agrees that the accident wasn't his fault.

Then it was cigars. Then it was horses. Then it was a distillery. Then he went to work on his shell, adding new chambers, bolstering his seams with bronze, and spinning his natural spines into monstrous spires and involutions. Then it was horses again.

For a while, he attended plays--his monstrous face peering over the roof of the theater, the light lessened by the shadows cast by the cyclopean parapets of his shell. He had no hands to clap with, but he voiced his approval by stamping his dozens of feet in the street outside, the sound of boulders falling. He brought many gifts for his favorite actresses.

And then it was girls. Perhaps it was something like a delayed puberty, an artifact of the many contortions his mother inflicted on his biology. Or perhaps he finally located his genitals within the cavernous carapace of his. Regardless, he threw himself into this newest mania with an appetite exceeding even his own previous frenzies.

He attempted the more typical methods of courtship, but after the predictable failure, he moved on to more transactional enterprises. Soon he was showing up to the plays with a nest of strumpets among the crenellations of his shell. He had gold aplenty, his mother's gold, dug up from whatever secret reef she had buried it during her regency.

The Lech visited the city even more, then. You could hear the booming gurgle as he laughed from the harbor, as he showed another girl how to use his mother's enormous harbor-bong. You could see him in the Grocer's Harbor, his gracile oral tentacles loading furniture into his freshly expanded shell, the prostitutes carrying off another chaise lounge to furnish some interior boudoir.

Artisans were brought in. His shell was caulked and sealed. He had airtight compartments, now. He could bring his girls down with him. He was too heavy to swim, but his crab legs could carry that castle through all the Bosperian depths.

He thought of himself as a clam, and the girls as his pearls.

Down in the bottom of the bay, where the watery sun above was paler than the moon, his girls would massage his aching mantle, and they would ask him about his childhood as a human. Did he remember his hands? Did he remember what is was like to kiss?

And in the face of these questions, he could only lie.

How to Use This in Your Game

I hope that you think that Lady Mantlewray and her son are as interesting as I do. They are certainly powerful, if you were to plop them down in your campaign world.

Lady Mantlewray's brain contains a wealth of potent knowledge. If you could find some way to leverage it, a piece of that trove could be yours. You could get a fortune of gold, or turn yourself into a kaiju of your own design. As an enemy, Lady Mantlewray is about as dangerous as any other 60,000 ton monster, so be careful before you tamper with her drug supply.

What does she want? An escape from her melancholy perhaps, or a remnant of her earlier days. Perhaps she wants her humanity back. Regardless, there are plenty of people in town who can answer this for you. Her son, perhaps, or even the Prophetessa (May She Live Again).

Her son might yield easier leverage, but perhaps in a riskier way. He is not dumb, although he may be a bit naive. And unlike his mother, the players will probably have no trouble thinking of ways to entice him.

There's also a great deal of interested parties. Many people would like to see the two monsters dead. The Marilanth Petal would like to be free of this responsibility, even though it would degrade their special status. (They've tried poisoning her; they don't recommend it.) The death of the monsters would also create a tremendous glut of drugs, unless the Marilanth Petal can keep a lid on things and enforce a certain level of stockpiling.

The merfolk would like to see the Mantlewray destroyed. Without her presence, the Bosperian ships are vulnerable again.

And even pieces of the monsters are valuable. There are many alchemists and biomancers who would pay handily for even a piece of the creatures: the Stewer's Guild, the Transmetallic Alchemists, Grandfather Oshregaal, etc.

Even the pieces are valuable. The players could be hired to steal a vulnerable cache of drugs (at the risk of incurring the Mantlewray's wrath). They could be hired to steal a velvet ooze from inside the Lech. You can even use the Lech as a questgiver (whose identity isn't immediately disclosed), as there are certainly many things that he would want to acquire, and many of which require a bit of legally ambiguous footwork.